Montessori-Pierson Publishing Company, p/o Koninginneweg 161, Amsterdam (2025)

21/09/2025

THE COSMIC FUNCTION
One side of evolution deals with the satisfaction of vital needs, defence, survival of the species and growth by modifications towards perfection. Another – and stronger – factor in evolutionary processes is concerned with the cosmic function of each living being, and even of inanimate natural objects, working in collaboration for the fulfilment of the Purpose of Life. All creatures work consciously for themselves, but the real purpose of their existence remains unconscious, yet claiming obedience. A coral polyp, if capable of conscious expression, would choose to live in calm and warm seas, undisturbed by river currents, and to have faithful attendants to bring it food without its having to stir in search of it. Corals never become aware that by their mode of living they preserve the purity of the water, so helping innumerable millions to live, and also build new land, to support future races. So the trees and plants might consciously exalt their desire for sunshine and vital need of carbon dioxide for their nourishment, unconscious that nature had given them these instinctual urges for the purpose of preserving the purity of the air, on which depend all higher life on earth. The bee who robs the flower of its nectar is aware only of his own need or the hive’s, not that the flower’s need of his visit is as great for its purpose of reproduction, for perpetuating the life of the species. Man too, like all beings, has the two purposes, conscious and unconscious. He is conscious of his own intellectual and physical needs, and of the claims on him of society and civilization. He believes in fighting for himself, his family and nation, but has yet to become conscious of his far deeper responsibilities to a cosmic task, his collaboration with others in work for his environment, for the whole universe…Page 24-25 from the book: To educate the human potential: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/to-educate-the-human-potential-vol-6; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/la-educacion-de-las-potencialidades-humanas-vol-6; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/opvoeden-voor-een-nieuwe-wereld-en-onderwijs-en-het-menselijk-potentieel

15/09/2025

IT IS TIME TO BRING ABOUT A GREAT REFORM
Let us therefore continue our efforts! Let us construct an environment for children and young people; the thanks we will receive for so doing will be the enlightenment we need to see all the errors inherent in the supernature that we adults have created only for ourselves. We must build something new, not offer older children the same things we offer the young ones. Miniature objects and utensils no longer satisfy seven-year-old children. They need other things. The four walls of a ‘house’ become too confining; older children need to go out and explore the world. They must have broader social horizons. Man feels a great need to make genuine efforts, so as to measure his own worth… It is time now to correct these errors, to bring about a great reform, to offer young people the means necessary for their development and the enhancement of their personalities. This task cannot be entrusted to private efforts alone; it is society as a whole that is called upon to fulfil it. It is of vital interest to the state to organize the life of young people. The child by the age of twelve should already be taking an active part in social life; he should be producing, selling, and working, not in order to learn a trade, but because working means coming into contact with life, participating in the building of supernature. These young people should engage in economic transactions, learn the value of money, and take conscious part in productive activities. Page 64 from the book Education and peace https://montessori-pierson.com/products/education-and-peace-vol-10 ; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/educacion-y-paz

06/09/2025

REFORMS THAT ARE IN RELATION WITH THE SOCIAL LIFE OF TODAY
The essential reform is this: to put the adolescent on the road to achieving economic independence. We might call it a “school of experience in the elements of social life.” This “independence” has more educational than practical value; that is to say, it has a closer connection with the psychology of the adolescent than with an eventual actual utility…Education should...include the two forms of work, manual and intellectual, for the same person, and thus make it understood by practical experience that these two kinds complete each other and are equally essential to a civilized existence. If we consider the plan from the point of view of our own method it can be regarded as a development of that principle that has already had such great success in our schools for smaller children right down to the nursery class, known as the “exercises of practical life.”…This has a truly educational, not utilitarian purpose. The reaction of the children may be described as a “burst of independence”…These children seem to be precocious in their intellectual development and they demonstrate that while working harder than other children they do so without tiring themselves. These very children reveal to us the most vital need of their development, saying: “Help me to do it alone!” Independence, in the case of the adolescents, has to be acquired on a different plane, for theirs is the economic independence in the field of society. Here, too, the principle of “Help me to do it alone!” ought to be applied. Page 61-63 from the book From Childhood to Adolescence https://montessori-pierson.com/products/from-childhood-to-adolescence-vol-12; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/de-la-infancia-a-la-adolescencia-vol-12 ; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/van-de-kinderjaren-naar-de-adolescentie

29/08/2025

EDUCATION OF MOVEMENT
The children look after the classroom. They sweep with their own small brooms and dust and scrub and polish. Then there is their own personal cleanliness. When a child’s hands are dirty, we do not take him to the basin and wash his hands or hold his face while we do the washing. The children learn to do these things for themselves as a matter of course, and even toddlers of two and three years can carry objects and wash themselves and lay a table. The children love to do these things for themselves and they learn to be careful and precise in their movements.This is both education of movement, because there is a refinement of muscular coordination when the work is carefully done, and education through movement, because these activities involve judgement and will, self-discipline, and an appreciation of orderliness. We do not teach the children these things to make little servants of them, but because we have observed that of their own accord children actually take the greatest interest in perfecting all the movements of daily life. P31 from the book: Maria Montessori speaks to parents https://montessori-pierson.com/products/maria-montessori-speaks-to-parents-vol-21 ; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/maria-montessori-le-habla-a-los-padres-vol-15 ; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/maria-montessori-in-gesprek-met-ouders

21/08/2025

IT IS THROUGH MOVEMENT THAT THE CHILD ARRIVES AT UNDERSTANDING MUSIC..We do not think that music is to prompt movement, but rather that the child can understand music through movement. By moving, his attention is directed to the music. It is movement that interests the child in music, and it is by movement that the very tiny child can arrive at understanding music with considerable delicacy.
If we see that the child is enjoying music, we must direct ourselves to the double periphery, that is, the sensorial and the motor. The child receives his impression of the music in the sensorial way and by movement. To further his enjoyment of music, we choose simple phrases in music which we repeat again and again, and the child by moving may be taken by the rhythm. In the early stages we may play music and may watch the children act in response. We merely give this fundamental idea of walking along the line which has been traced, and the child walks on the line naturally. We are not to be anxious that he should do it in a certain way.
…It is through movement that the child arrives at understanding music. It is not only by playing and singing for the child that this happens; he must understand it by his own movements. Page 31-33 from the book The montessori approach to music: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/the-montessori-approach-to-music-vol-23

12/08/2025

EDUCATION MUST BEGIN AT BIRTH
…something takes place in the subconscious which is not seen from the outside. How else would he speak with such exactness? The fact that nothing external is being shown is no proof that something very important is not happening. This is why we must understand this stage in human development; if you study psychology from the outer reactions and aspect of the child, if you judge from the external behaviour and think nothing is happening inside, then you would be making a grave mistake.The greatest mistake ever made is to isolate the child from the society of the adult, as has happened in modern times. We admit the child to the company of adults only when he has a mind similar to the adults. A child needs to be with adults when he is a tiny child. It is the reality of the results which has given us new faith that something is happening within the child at this early age. Therefore, we must always take him with us; we should talk to him – we should not relegate him to one room to sleep alone all day. He can sleep all night. He must have the opportunities to make those acquisitions which endow him with human faculties. Certainly it is a new task that confronts us, to study and take into account the needs of this absorbent mind. It is to respond to these needs that we say, ‘Education must begin at birth’. We must provide the child’s psychic powers with the nourishment they require. Page 53 from the book The 1946 London Lectures: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/the-1946-london-lectures-vol-17 ;https://montessori-pierson.com/products/las-conferencias-de-londres-en-1946-vol-17

06/08/2025

START PRIMARY SCHOOL AT THREE OR EVEN TWO YEARS OF AGE
At six they are just beginning to understand the world. They have already understood much without a teacher. We cannot begin their education at six, because they have already been through an entire life which has now finished. If a child were to receive no instruction during this life, at the age of six, he would be undernourished. If at six we make a start at teaching him from the beginning, then he would only be bored. The conclusion is that children should start primary school well before the age of six. Some are now saying that children should begin school at five years of age. But even this is too late. At three, a kind of lull sets in, a waiting for the next period. Suppose we start at three or even two years of age. It is possible for the child to gain a great deal of knowledge before the age of six, without fatigue, because nourishment does not cause fatigue. If a child becomes tired from being taught, it is a sign that we are presenting the wrong knowledge at the wrong time. The child must enjoy learning because he is an intelligent, free creature in the world. The characteristic of man is intelligence and so it certainly should be a joy to exercise one’s intelligence. It should give satisfaction and enthusiasm for work. If a school does not provide this, then the school must be wrong and apparently not base itself on the child’s true nature. Page 27 from the book The 1946 London Lectures: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/the-1946-london-lectures-vol-17 ;https://montessori-pierson.com/products/las-conferencias-de-londres-en-1946-vol-17

15/07/2025

From the great turmoil arose a vision of peace and justice and, when it was over, many peoples united to take measures to ensure that never again would differences between men lead to a disaster of such proportion, that never again storms of selfishness, hatred, inconceivable cruelty and terror would come to pass, that never again would there be a need to resort to destruction in desperate defence of humanistic ideals.
From this concert between peoples emerged the Declaration we are celebrating today.
(On December 10, 1951, the third anniversary of the “Declaration of Human Rights”was celebrated throughout the world in an effort to elicit the moral adherence and commitment of those responsible in the areas of politics, education and culture, thus ensuring that the principles of the Declaration would become a common heritage and grow in daily practice.
Maria Montessori was invited by UNESCO to speak.) page 47
Principle 10
The child shall be protected from practices which may foster racial, religious and any other form of discrimination. He shall be brought up in a spirit of understanding, tolerance, friendship among peoples, peace and universal brotherhood, and in full consciousness that his energy and talents should be devoted to the service of his fellow men. page 60 of the book Citizen of the World https://montessori-pierson.com/products/citizen-of-the-world-vol-14; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/ciudadano-del-mundo-vol-11https://montessori-pierson.com/products/ciudadano-del-mundo-vol-11.

08/07/2025

CONSTRUCTION THROUGH SENSITIVITIES
…life is endowed with certain sensitivities, and all acquisitions follow from them. The child is directed in his growth to the acquisition of human faculties by particular sensitivities which are not permanent but last only for determined periods of time necessary for making a specific acquisition. Then they cease. Dr Montessori calls these the sensitive periods of growth. As long as they exist, the child feels a strong attraction towards certain sets of experiences, but the attraction is not prompted by his will, just as hunger and the subsequent attraction to food is not due to a determination on one’s part to be hungry. Nature gives the adult, as well as the child, intelligent directives by a sensitivity without which one might die of starvation. In the child the directing unconscious sets have both a definite path and a definite timetable.
Guided by these temporary sensitivities, the child constructs sets of permanent ones which determine his attitude towards life. He builds up a fairly perfect adaptation to his special environment. The mother- tongue acquired by him in childhood, generally speaking, will be the only language he will feel comfortable with…The same can be said for the other aspects of the human personality…the deep feelings for one’s own motherland, religion, special customs….are so powerful that they shape the individual’s attitude towards life.
None of these are inborn; they have nothing to do with heredity. They are due to an active construction of the child carried out in the unconscious and made under the guidance of special sensitivities, which disappear after they have fulfilled their task. The constructions, however, remain and their sum total forms the attitude of the individual, guiding the conscious of his later life.
So, we must take into consideration the unconscious and the built-up subconscious along with consciousness itself. That is education. Page 102-103 from the book Interpreting Montessori, A Selection of Writings by Mario M. Montessori https://montessori-pierson.com/products/interpreting-montessori-a-selection-of-writings-by-mario-m-montessori-vol-26

24/06/2025

THE UNIVERSE AS A VISION OF THE WHOLE
It is certainly necessary to centralize the interest of the child, but the usual methods today are not effective to that end. How can the mind of a growing individual continue to be interested if all our teaching be around one particular subject of limited scope, and is confined to the transmission of such small details of knowledge as he is able to memorize? How can we force the child to be interested when interest can only arise from within? It is only duty and fatigue which can be induced from without, never interest! That point must be very clear.
If the idea of the universe be presented to the child in the right way, it will do more for him than just arouse his interest, for it will create in him admiration and wonder, a feeling loftier than any interest and more satisfying…Page 4 from the book: To educate the human potential: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/to-educate-the-human-potential-vol-6; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/la-educacion-de-las-potencialidades-humanas-vol-6; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/opvoeden-voor-een-nieuwe-wereld-en-onderwijs-en-het-menselijk-potentieel

17/06/2025

EDUCATION FOR PEACE
I would like to propound an idea of fundamental importance: the sort of education required to advance the cause of peace must necessarily be complex and altogether different from what is ordinarily meant by the word education.
Education as it is ordinarily regarded plays no part in solving important social questions and is believed to have no effect on situations concerning humanity as a whole. It is considered, in short, to be of very limited importance. But if we are to have genuine education for peace, education must be universally considered a fundamental and indispensable factor, the point of departure, a question of crucial interest to all mankind. When we consider social questions, the child is totally ignored, as if he were not a member of society at all. But if we ponder the influence that education can have on the attainment of world peace, it becomes clear that we must make the child and his education our primary concern…
Education must no longer be regarded only as a matter of teaching children, but as a social question of the highest importance, because it is the one question that concerns all mankind. The many other social questions have to do with one group or another of adults, with relatively small numbers of human beings; the social question of the child, however, has to do with all men everywhere. Page 44 from the book Education and Peace https://montessori-pierson.com/products/education-and-peace-vol-10 ; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/educacion-y-paz

10/06/2025

THE SURPRISING POWER OF THE YOUNG CHILD
…It was the revelation of the great powers existing in man at an age when there was not yet any regard for him – when he is a young child. These little children came alight with joy and began to read and write. No teacher had taught them and they read and wrote from morning to night. Their joy was like a flame. The important thing was this sudden revelation in the psychology of the child. Their achievement was not due to the action of an educator – it was a revelation of the power of little children. People made a lot of fuss about the method. Everyone said it was my marvellous method which gave this ability to children, and everyone was enthusiastic about it. However, it was neither the school nor the method which produced this phenomenon. It was the expression of the power of the small child and it was a revelation of something that had hitherto remained unknown. The important thing was the discovery of the surprising power of the young child. I was lost in admiration – in the realization that children at such a young age, four and a half years, have this great power, this great intelligence! The older children, the nine- year-olds, were less intelligent. This was the first time that we had evidence that the intelligence of man does not progress forward, becoming ever greater. At the different ages there are different mentalities. There is a form of mind in younger children that is different from that of older children. For the first time we realized that the young child has powers which are lost as it grows older. It is a matter of the evolution of each life individually. Page 10/11 from the book The 1946 London Lectures: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/the-1946-london-lectures-vol-17 ;https://montessori-pierson.com/products/las-conferencias-de-londres-en-1946-vol-17

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